This has annoyed me all day. First they renew the “economic agreement” with Mozilla until 2011, and now they’re going to release their own browser. What?
Don’t they have shareholders who have a big stake ($463 right now) to gratify? That’s like Microsoft hiring Linus Torvalds to work on the Linux kernel. How do you get away with something like that? Is Google so rich that it is paying people to compete with it?
Actually, that last one is kind of funny.
This makes so little sense to me that I have to think of outrageous reasons for the announcement :
- Starting with the least outrageous reason : Google is actually trying to expand competition in the web browser/mobile space. Though, I thought that IE/Opera/Firefox/Safari was a good mix. This isn’t gas stations we’re talking about. Competition for browser market share extends far beyond these four browsers.
- They legalized mind altering drugs in Mountain View. (Mythical mushrooms in the Escape menu, Hippie crack at Slice)
- They’re sending Mozilla a second hint that they want Mozilla to drop Gecko
- Judging by some of the screenshots, this is another way to get more Google traffic. But come on? Your own browser?
Comments, additional conspiracies welcome.
September 1st, 2008 |
Tags: google chrome
September 6th, 2008 at 08:25
“That’s like Microsoft hiring Linus Torvalds to work on the Linux kernel”
Well, I have to agree with you with most of the post. but I quoted this line, because Google and Mozilla are not actual enemies, even with the last announcements. I think that support an open-source project can be more productive (to you) than start you own open-source project. Making their all good ideas true, they’ll be able to consume the good ideas which are already done by the open-source world, and thus improving their own product. But what I don’t understand are the real intentions behind Chrome, which is open-source too. Two promising projects, both on the same line, both open-source. I would understand more if it were something like Picasa.
I’ve heard that Chrome has been “stealing” more IE users than Firefox have done. And this could be an approach to users who aren’t familiar with other browsers than Mifrosoft’s.
The other thing I think (more interesting) is that Google wants complete control of Mozilla, and Chrome was a simply power demonstration. No big announcements, just releasing and it has been increasing in number of users. At least, they are proposing a tighter union between Google Labs and Mozilla Labs, to create the Googlezilla (or Moogle) web platform.
Just thinking.
Sorry for my bad English. Brasileiro.